Category: employment

Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant, another victim of the anti-nuclear movement

This week, covered up by election coverage, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant closed down for good. Somewhere, a whole bunch of anti-nuclear activists are cheering. To replace Fort Calhoun, Omaha Power will instead use coal fired plants in Nebraska City, unless of course the future President Clinton shuts down coal, in which case Omaha will just not have enough power.

Fort Calhoun’s problems are just the surface of a growing threat to the future of nuclear energy in America. More nuclear plants are closing, and we aren’t building replacements. The soaring cost of nuclear regulation is piling on to what should be cheap power. The building of nuclear plants requires high level engineering work, something that normally brings in stable, long-term and high paying jobs.

But not anymore. I keep in touch with a headhunter that places nuclear-trained officers (like myself) into jobs after they leave the Navy. He sent a very depressing email to his distribution group, where he declared that he would no longer place officers in the commercial nuclear field:

The promise of cheap power via commercial nuclear was supposed to be its big advantage. It was once even touted as “too cheap to meter!” But it is economics that are now killing the industry. Utilities are deciding it’s less expensive to close plants that are already operating than continue their operation. Think about that: it’s more economical to idle billions of dollars worth of existing infrastructure and spend the money to be build new generation facilities. That’s crazy and a powerful indication of how uncompetitive commercial nuclear power has become.

We at -redacted- believe that strong professional successful Navy Officers should now avoid jobs and careers in commercial nuclear power and are suspending our relationships with our corporate clients in that sector. If a career in commercial nuclear power is your focus, we will not be a good career transition resource for you.

Recent and future nuclear power plant closings and changes:

San Onofre in CA closing

Diablo Canyon in CA closing

Crystal River in FL closing

Vermont Yankee in VT closing

Pilgrim in MA closing

Kewaunee in WI closing

Harris in SC, 2 plants cancelled

Levy County in FL shifting from nuclear to natural gas

Comanche Peak in TX, 2 plants cancelled

Quad Cities in IL closing

Clinton in IA closing

Oyster Creek in NJ closing

And more are coming…

I have a former Naval Officer friend that worked at San Onofre who confirmed all this bad news. She has since left with her husband for a completely different career field.

Meanwhile, China is rapidly building nuclear capacity, growing their engineering base in the process. Now they have designed a small reactor capable of providing 6 MW of power, enough to power a small island (South China Sea anyone?). Although the media is touting this as an accomplishment, it’s not. The Army built a number of small reactors, the Navy currently operates reactors on its submarines and aircraft carriers, and even the Air Force attempted to make nuclear powered aircraft. And this was back in the 60’s and 70’s. If we had continued investing in nuclear power, we could have closed our dirty coal plants and lowered electricity costs, perhaps enabling us to build the renewable energy sources for long-term electrical generation. Instead, we’re taking a second seat to China.

This post is the opinion of the author and does not reflect the views of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

If you enjoyed this article, check out my blog and perhaps buy my kids book. And, instead of paying 5 dollars for a latte from Starbucks that they’ll use to fund Planned Parenthood, you should consider sending that to Da Tech Guy’s Tip Jar instead.

Lastly, please say a prayer for all the families of the engineers affected by Fort Calhoun’s shutdown. They now have to find new employment, and it’ll be hard on them for the next few years.

The movement to a nationwide $15 hourly minimum wage rolls right along, no matter what reality commands.

A lot of it has to do with organized labor, where many salary agreements are pegged to the minimum wage. Some of it has to do with “social justice”, where utopian views cloud reality, such as this (emphasis added):

it might take time for employers of many low-skill workers to learn how to economize on their labor costs, but they will over time, since the incentives to do so are much larger – and that would be bad news for the very low-skill workers the higher minimum wage is designed to help. For instance, fast-food workers might be more easily replaced by robots.

In the back kitchen of Mountain View’s newest pizzeria, Marta works tirelessly, spreading marinara sauce on uncooked pies. She doesn’t complain, takes no breaks, and has never needed a sick day. She works for free.

Marta also does not require mandated paid leave, payroll tax paperwork, and you don’t need to worry about checking her credit rating or her criminal record, or spend money on marijuana or drug screening.

Why?

Marta is one of two robots working at Zume Pizza, a secretive food delivery startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through machines.

Not only that, Marta can produce 100% consistent quality control, which includes “an artisanal touch,”

“We created her to spread your sauce perfectly, but not too perfectly, so the pizza still looks like an artisan product,” Garden said.

And to appeal to people like me, who would love a taco truck on Monday, a gyro truck on Tuesday, and a pastrami on rye truck on Wednesday (emphasis added),

In August, Zume wants to start cooking its pizzas in the startup’s patented delivery trucks. Each truck has 56 ovens that can be turned on and off remotely. Garden can barely contain his excitement for what comes next: “The robots will load all these individual ovens with different menu items. Then the truck will circle the neighborhood. At precisely 3 minutes and 15 seconds before arriving at the customer’s location, the cloud commands the oven to turn on and–” Garden made the symbol of a large explosion emanating from his brain– “BOOM, the customer gets a fresh, out-the-oven pizza delivered to their door.”

The Difference between a national story and a local story is illustrated in Minneapolis:

A woman was sexually assaulted by a group of four men and a teenager while walking along a south Minneapolis street Saturday evening, according to a safety advisory issued by Minneapolis police.

The victim was walking in the Lyndale neighborhood around 9 p.m. when a car full of men called her over to their vehicle. They spoke briefly and she continued walking, police said.

A short time later, the five men returned and approached her on foot. They forced the woman to go to an area near 32nd Street and Blaisdell Avenue S., where they sexually assaulted her, police said.

Now this is definitely a local story and not a national one, why because of this sentence

Police released the following descriptions for the five, all identified as Somalis, with dark complexions.

Yup nothing to see here USA move along.

Over at Stacy McCain’s site there is a story about another alleged rape:

Nor are people thinking about what they are doing in the real world in an age where everybody’s cellphone has a video camera, where anything a guy does in his dating relationships may become the subject of an online rant by an angry ex-girlfriend, where a guy meets a girl at a party and has what seems to him a consensual hookup only to discover, nearly two years later, that she’s telling the world that he’s a rapist.

But his main point is more cultural in terms of a warning to young men who do their thinking below the waist.

What you need me for is to explain the meaning of “crazy.” If a guy meets a girl at a party, how does he know if she’s crazy? Well, if he says “let’s go back to my place” and she says “yes,” that’s probably a sign she’s crazy. No sane girl would say yes to such an invitation. The dude might have herpes. He might be a rapist.

She barely knows this guy and she’s leaving the party with him? Crazy. Then she goes back to his place, goes to his bedroom, takes off all her clothes and thinks he’s not going to have sex with her? Crazy.

This is what I’ve explained to my sons. There is a direct correlation between (a) a woman’s willingness to engage in casual sex, and (b) a woman being crazy. As a general rule, the quicker she drops her pants, the crazier she is. Every guy is prone to believe that his own personal charm suffices to explain why this woman he just met is willing to leave the party with him for a quick hookup. “He shoots! He scores!”

Yeah, he’s a natural-born winner. The ladies can’t resist him.

That’s what he’s telling himself anyway, as he blazes past the flashing yellow lights and warning signs: “CAUTION: CRAZY WOMAN.”

The Greeks called it hubris, this arrogance that leads a man to destruction.

As a pair of them were leaving, both college age women they passed by me closes and shouted how they would be having a ton of abortions.

It occurs to me that these are the woman that the Pump and Dump crowd that Stacy McCain has referred to are counting on and in a very few years we might see one of them on feminist tumbler making the same charges that Rosie did.

The college Republicans were prohibited from filming the talk, and students were not allowed to ask Milo any questions verbally — they had to be scribbled on the back of index cards. Yiannopoulos was also prohibited from speaking to students one-on-one after the event and was escorted out of the building by campus officials as soon as his talk concluded.

After organizing the event, Ciccotta faced a backlash from Bucknell’s faculty. After suggesting, in a private meeting, that the event with Milo had been Bucknell’s “best ever,” he was told by the college’s Student Media Advisor that his attitude would “isolate” the people who worked under him at the college’s radio station.

He was later threatened with having his position as host of a political talk show on campus taken away over an alleged “conflict of interest.”

After all there is nothing worse than being a conservative.

There are very few things less surprising than conservatives being punished on campus for being conservative, this is one of them via the lonely conservative:

Good grief, thanks to Obamacare health insurance rates have been skyrocketing for years. Instead of leveling out, it’s only going to get worse. That’s coming from the woman who helped the implement the train wreck.

ObamaCare rates will skyrocket next year, according to its former chief. Enrollment is tumbling this year. And a big insurer is quitting most exchanges. That’s what we learned in just the past few days.

Marilyn Tavenner, CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, revealed that she expects ObamaCare premium hikes “to be higher than we saw previous years,” including last year, which saw double-digit rate increases across the country.

Labor Markets: Hundreds of employees at the University of California at Berkeley are getting schooled in basic economics, as the $15 minimum wage just cost them their jobs. Too bad liberal elites “fighting for $15” don’t get it.

A week after California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the state’s $15 minimum wage boost into law, UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks sent a memo to employees announcing that 500 jobs were getting cut.

Glenn uses he word: Unexpectedly here I suspect that the same could be used to suggest that most of the leaders of those pushing for a $15 an hour minimum wage have positions that will never be lost because of the wage hike.

People have accused Curt Schilling of many things but there is one change that he have convicted himself out of his own mouth affairaphobic!

Speaking to Bannon, Schilling said, “I’m not transphobic, I’m not homophobic.” He added, “As long as you’re not sleeping with my wife, I don’t care who you sleep with.”

How DARE Curt Schilling advocating restricting the sexual freedom of people to exclude the choice of having sex with his wife on the trivial grounds that he’s married to her? But I’m not worried in a few years will have laws on the books that will protect the rights of people who wish to have sex with people outside of their marriage from financial penalties from angry spouses and anyone who things otherwise will be branded as a bigot by the media.

Finally there is an interesting debate at PJ Media concerning a parent who took her kids to Dairy Queen and then immediately threw away her kids ice cream when they failed to thank the person who gave it to them.

I think it’s the mother’s call here but I guarantee you there is a near 0% chance that they will neglect to say “Thank you” on their next ice cream run.

Last week American Apparel, the biggest clothing maker in Los Angeles, said it might outsource the making of some garments to another manufacturer in the U.S., and wiped out about 500 local jobs. The company still employs about 4,000 workers in Southern California.

and it’s not just the big manufacturers who are getting hit

Felix Seo has been making clothes for wholesale in downtown for 30 years. His company, Joompy, used to count giant retailers like Forever 21 among its clients. But as prices have gone up in recent years, he said, those fast-fashion peddlers are no longer giving him orders.

“I used to pay $5 to get this sewn, and now it costs $6.50,” Seo said, holding up a patterned dress. “But my customer doesn’t want to pay that, so I can’t sell it anymore.”

To survive, Seo, 59, said Joompy may have to start importing goods instead of producing them locally. “It will be impossible to make clothes in Los Angeles,” he said.

The Unions of course are saying it’s all greed

“It’s always, ‘Oh woe is me, If I pay minimum wage at this rate I can’t turn a profit,'” said Nativo Lopez, a senior adviser with Hermandad Mexicana, which is helping American Apparel workers unionize.

Martinez, a 53-year-old bellhop, has hauled tourists’ luggage across the flagstone plaza of the Sheraton Universal in Studio City for two decades. He said he was excited after the council’s vote to raise the minimum hourly wage at large hotels to $15.37, which he expected to boost his paycheck by 71%.

He soon found out he wouldn’t be getting a raise after all. Under an obscure provision of the city’s wage hike, unionized hotels were granted an exemption allowing them to pay their employees less. The result is that Martinez, who pays $56.50 every month for membership in the hotel workers union Unite Here, now makes less than those doing the same job in non-union workplaces.

Like this:

1977 was the year that music came out of the concert halls and into the streets; when independent labels sprang out of the woodwork to feed new tastes; when rock music once again became about energy and fun; when the majors’ boardrooms lost control. Suddenly we could do anything. —Liner notes to Streets, a collection of punk singles, 1977.

That snippet comes from Greil Marcus’ “Anarchy in the UK” chapter in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll. Such as it was nearly forty years ago in Great Britain with punk rock as it is with Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

Do you want proof? Just nine days ago the ultimate GOP insider, Karl Rove, hosted a meeting of Republican governors at the ultimate insider’s hotel, the Willard in Washington, where, the New York Times reported, George W. Bush’s Darth Vader, sitting at the end of a boardroom table, said it was not too late to stop Donald Trump.

Well if it isn’t too late now it will very likely be so by Tuesday night when the Super Tuesday results come in.

Republican politics has escaped the boardroom and it’s not just on the streets, it’s at the home computer keyboard, it’s in the employee cafeteria, and at the check-out line at the local Walmart.

Like the music industry “experts” in the late 1970s, the Republican Party has ignored what its bases really wants. And the base opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants, ObamaCare, and crony capitalism. Despite promises of eliminating the first two, the Republican Party has at best only offered shadow boxing attacks on them. The last one, crony capitalism, is seemingly esoteric, but it’s a cousin of illegal immigration. I mean, why are we bringing in computer and software developers from Asia on H1-B visas? Are there no computer science programs in the United States? Of course there are. But the US Chamber of Commerce and its members, or as Mark Levin calls the group, the US Chamber of Crony Capitalism, is behind this importation of high-paid workers because it knows big corporations will pay these indentured foreigners a lot less than qualified Americans, who often have to train their cheaper replacements.

For the first times since I lost my job an Stacy McCain lost his Twitter right we’ve had a setback in our quest for $61 to make a living back here at the blog. Yesterday DaTipJar was completely and utterly silent.

Today we’re doing a tad better we’re $12 toward our $61 daily goal with $49 dollars to go in the next 9 hours to get us back on track for the day without denting our current deficit for the year at 21 days and $1335 dollars.

If less than 1% of yesterday’s readers kicked in $10 our goal for the day would be made with ease and to those who already have thank you so much. For those who can’t afford it, don’t worry about it but I do ask you to promote the site.

To those both able and inclined I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us close that gap by hitting DaTipJar.

Please consider Subscribing. 114.5 more subscribers at $10 a month will get the job done for the year and will get you my weekly podcast emailed directly to you before it goes up anywhere else.

It’s been a few months since I’ve been writing, and the occasion of the 8th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Recession seemed an appropriate time to return to the ranks of the punditry. I jumped into the middle of a Twitter mini-discussion over the part-time portion of the workforce, specifically the apparent paradox of 319,000 more people working part-time for economic reasons on a seasonally adjusted basis last month than in October while 765,000 fewer people were working part-time for economic reasons on a seasonally-adjusted basis (746,000 fewer on a not-seasonally-adjusted basis) last month than in November 2014. Something Charles Franklin said sent me into this particular tangent of comparing the current level of part-time work to the recent past.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, as part of the Current Population Survey that measures unemployment, estimates the number of people working part-time, both the total number and those working part-time for economic reasons. Indeed, the latter is the last part of the broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment, the U-6 measure. Unlike most portrayals in the press, it is not a measure of part-time, or full-time jobs. Rather, it is the number of people who, at however many jobs they have, are working less than 35 hours per week for part-time status, or at least 35 hours per week for full-time status.

I do have a word of caution on the seasonal adjustment of the part-time measure of employment, especially the economic reason portion. More often than not, a wild swing in one direction is followed by an essentially-equal swing back. The November rise in the number of people working came after drops of 447,000 in September and 269,000 in October.

With that noted, I decided to calculate the percentage of the employed who were working part-time and the percentage who were working part-time due to economic conditions since the current version of the CPS began in 1994:

Click the images for the full-size versions

In short, while things have been improving, there is still quite a ways to go to get back to where we were before the Great Recession on the employment front.

Like this:

Most people who spend their employment years in the U.S. will never hear of Fatca, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. Fatca was enacted in 2010 under the Obama Democrat administration.

However, Fatca affects an estimated eight million American citizens working overseas. As the Wall Street Journal points out (emphasis added) there are compliance costs,

Fatca requires that foreign banks, brokers, insurers and other financial institutions give the U.S. Internal Revenue Service detailed asset and transaction records for any accounts held by Americans, including corporate accounts controlled by American employees. If a firm fails to comply, the IRS can slap it with a 30% withholding tax on transactions originating in the U.S. Facing such risks and compliance costs, many foreign firms have decided it’s easier to dump their American clients.

And forget about overseas business partnerships or future promotions,

American expats in the Fatca age are also less attractive as employees and business partners, as any financial accounts they can access must now be exposed to government scrutiny—not only from the U.S. but potentially also from more than 100 other countries that have signed Fatca-related information-sharing agreements with Washington. Americans up for executive posts in Brazil, Singapore, Switzerland and elsewhere have been asked by their managers to renounce their U.S. citizenship or lose their promotion

Renouncing your citizenship is a momentous decision that is never taken lightly; now it’s also more expensive since the fee went up this year to $2,350 (used to be $450), in addition to exit taxes on current assets.

The unknown consequences of the TPP, the Trans Pacific Partnership, of which even its staunchest supporters believe will result in job losses in the U.S.,

the huge influx of skilled and unskilled labor into the country, including H1B visa workers which may get paid 40% less than the American workers who are forced to train them before they are laid off, as was the case with Disney.

And now, for the millions of Americans who have found overseas employment,

Increased financial risks and compliance costs

Plus additional government scrutiny, “not only from the U.S. but potentially also from more than 100 other countries that have signed Fatca-related information-sharing agreements”, information which can be used against them by the 100 “other countries,” many of which are not democracies committed to human rights.

But hey, the 8 million Americans living overseas are not here to complain, and the current administration is not interested in a welcoming business environment. It’s just one more instance, as the WSJ put it, of “U.S. tax and regulatory policies that hamper the entire U.S. economy.”

Fausta Rodriguez Wertz writes on U.S. and Latin American politics, news, and culture at Fausta’s Blog.

it’s entirely possible. At least for those of us who are paying attention.

I apologize for my long absence. I attribute it to PTSD.

The Mayo Clinic describes PTSD as:

Post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms may start within three months of a traumatic event, but sometimes symptoms may not appear until years after the event. These symptoms cause significant problems in social or work situations and in relationships.

PTSD symptoms are generally grouped into four types: intrusive memories, avoidance, negative changes in thinking and mood, or changes in emotional reactions. source

A traumatic event doesn’t have to originate on the battlefield. I would categorize the re-election of Obama as a traumatic event. Re-read the symptoms, and tell me they don’t apply to what’s going on in this country. I’m going to stick to national rather than international events so we’re not too overwhelmed.

We are daily bombarded by bad news and intrusive government. The millions of people who are out of work with no impending prospects for a job are most certainly suffering a traumatic event. House foreclosed? I’d call that pretty traumatic. How about losing your health insurance or having your rates skyrocket?

People are becoming more reluctant to express an opinion for fear of the politically correct social justice warriors ruining their lives – both economically and socially.

Schools no longer teach children, but instead try to indoctrinate them into a progressive world view. When they’re not compliant enough, the parents are threatened and coerced into giving them dangerous drugs. In every case of the recent mass shootings, the perpetrators had been taking psychotropic drugs.

The religious freedoms of Christians are being stomped on by a cabal of atheistic progressives. Less than a week ago, Obama had this to say:

“How do you reconcile the idea of faith being really important to you and you caring a lot about taking faith seriously with the fact that, at least in our democracy and our civic discourse, it seems as if folks who take religion the most seriously sometimes are also those who are suspicious of those not like them?”

“You’ve struggled with the fact that here in the United States, sometimes Christian interpretation seems to posit an ‘us versus them,’ and those are sometimes the loudest voices.” source

Get it? If you’re a Christian and concerned about the direction the country is taking, you are now labeled “suspicious.”

Every day, we are lied to by the political class with the help of the MSM. Only the most secluded people are not aware the economy is in the toilet. A trip to the grocery store can be traumatic due to inflation. I’d call ground beef priced at well over $4.00 per pound traumatic.

Some of us are reacting to what is going on using avoidance:

Trying to avoid thinking or talking about the traumatic event.

Avoiding places, activities or people that remind you of the traumatic event.

Or these other symptoms from the Mayo clinic:

Negative changes in thinking and mood

Symptoms of negative changes in thinking and mood may include:

Negative feelings about yourself or other people.

Inability to experience positive emotions.

Feeling emotionally numb.

Lack of interest in activities you once enjoyed.

Hopelessness about the future.

Changes in emotional reactions

Symptoms of changes in emotional reactions (also called arousal symptoms) may include:

Irritability, angry outbursts or aggressive behavior.

Always being on guard for danger.

Self-destructive behavior, such as drinking too much or driving too fast.

Trouble concentrating.

Trouble sleeping.

Now that I’ve contributed to your PTSD with all this gloom and doom, allow me to make some suggestions.

How to deal with PTSD of this type:

I’m not a doctor, and don’t even play one on TV, but I do have coping skills for you to use.

Prayer can change your life. Find some time every day to connect with God.

Take care of yourself. Eat a balanced diet, go for a walk every day, and get plenty of sleep. If possible, take a short nap in the afternoon. Get dressed everyday, even if you’re not going anywhere.

Incorporate routine into your day. Try to go to bed at the same time, and arise at the same time. Have a daily and weekly schedule, but don’t worry if unforeseen events upset your routine.

If you’re job hunting, make a list of all the places you’d like to work, get dressed in your best interview clothes, and show up. Ask to speak to the person in charge of the department in which you’d like to work, or the owner of the business if it is a smaller one. I never, ever got a job by submitting an online application. One time I showed up at a place that required on-line applications. The manager liked me and took me into the back room to fill out the application on their computer, and the next day I started work. Remember, the very worst thing that could happen is they say no. Go to the next place on the list.

If you’re a stay-at-home mom (the best kind in my opinion), learn how to save money by shopping smart. There’s a gazillion places on the web to help you.

Find a special friend to share your worries with. It’s the cheap version of expensive talk therapy. Don’t forget to help them with their worries. Helping other people is very therapeutic.

I’m not a big believer in medication for anxiety and stress, and think it should be avoided when possible. Try some natural remedies. If things are really spiraling out of control, talk to your doctor before going the drug route. In some cases it is a necessary path to follow.

And lastly, have faith and hope. Not the false “hope” that Obama peddled to an unsuspecting public. Real hope.

Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.

The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man; it takes up the hopes that inspire men’s activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity.

San Francisco’s Newest Fast Food: Healthy, Cheap and Served by Robots

Do tell:

Across the country, restaurants are looking for innovative ways to keep humans out of the picture. But what’s unique about Eatsa is the focus on health and taste. It’s a fully-automated experience, so Eatsa can afford to offer high-quality food for less. Workers’ salaries account for about 30 percent of the restaurant industry’s costs.

The team spent over two years rigorously testing the texture of the sauces and the grain to optimize the taste. Eatsa will also offer a range of beverages, which are sugar-free or low in sugar. Eatsa plans to open two more locations in the coming months, including a restaurant in Los Angeles.

This story is likely no surprise for our regular readers but for our friends on the left it must come as quite a shock that they have made this alternative cost effective:

Yup, technology will serve the meals, not unskilled, inexperienced, $15 an hour, coffee break and maternity/paternity leave humans. Thanks to unions and Leftists, the poor will get poorer, those in poverty will have fewer opportunities to get out from under and the techies will continue to take over the world.

The latest figures, for 2013, show California’s housing cost adjusted poverty rate to be 23.4 percent, nearly half again as high as the national average of 15.9 percent.

Back in the years when the nation had a “California Dream,” it would have been inconceivable for things to have gotten so bad — particularly amidst what is widely hailed as a spectacular recovery. The 2013 data shows California to have the worst housing cost adjusted poverty rate among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. But it gets worse. California’s poverty rate is now more than 50 percent higher than Mississippi, which long has set the standard for extreme poverty in the United States (Figure 1).

How bad are things in California? California’s domestic migration has been negative every year since at least 1990. In fact, since 1990, according to the U.S. Census, 3,642,490 people, net, have left California. If they were in one city, it would be the third largest city in America, with a population 800,000 more than Chicago and within 200,000 of Los Angeles’ population.

It’s very likely that we will see California revert to the old feudal days of powerful rich landowners and peons with nothing who will have only the state and the church to sustain them. That is of course if the feudal lords of the left allow the church to remain.

Two closing thoughts:

1. As this chain expands how long will it take for other chains needing to compete with them to also go the robot route?

2. How much longer will it be before the cooks are replaced by machines too?

*********************************************************************

I have yet to be replaced by a Robot so the only way I can keep doing this full time is if my pay comes from you. My annual goal is Twenty Two grand which will give me a nominal living doing this.

For a Donald Trump the 22K that would cover my expenses for the and the extra $10K that would pay for the roof, car, floor kitchen and bathroom repairs that I had to put on plastic would be nothing and if my traffic was the size of a Drudge getting enough people to kick in to cover those bills would likely not be an issue.

But I have to take things as they are so if you like what you see here including my paid writers like Tim Imholt, Fausta Wertz, Pat Austin et/al and have a little extra you can spare. I’d appreciate it if you would hit DaTipJar

That gets all the bills paid. If I can get to Forty Thousand I can afford to travel outside of New England and/or hire more blogger to help me get it done.

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A key part of President Obama’s legacy will be the fed’s unprecedented collection of sensitive data on Americans by race. The government is prying into our most personal information at the most local levels, all for the purpose of “racial and economic justice.”

Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites.

The NY Post notes multiple sources of data and touches on the collection of disciplinary data collected by school districts and states. The NY Post’s article cites the Civil Rights Data Collection survey (CRDC), but misses key information about it.

Missouri Education Watchdog notes that the CRDC goes back to 1968, but in recent years has expanded what is collected and how often. Also in the Missouri Education Watchdog piece is mention of the AFFH as a vehicle for ‘solving’ disproportionate education spending.

I want to look a bit closer at the student data so that the public can see just how rich a source of information it will be in the wrong hands.

Some student data historyBy Law, the U.S. Department of Education is prohibited from creating a national database or system. However, in 2009, states were incentivized with Stimulus funds to build Statewide Longitudinal Database Systems (SLDS).

The U.S. Department of Education is also prohibited from dictating standards or curriculum, but with the advent of Common Core, the Race To The Top grant money was used again to fiscally rope states into using the standards.

In 2013 testimony before a Missouri legislature Education committee, American Principles Fellow Jane Robbins laid bare the path of the data collected by these systems:

Here is an example of what the U.S. Department wants to do with student data. It is now in a joint venture with the U.S. Department of Labor to use education data for workforce-training programs. The Department of Labor makes no bones about its intention to access “individual-level data” from education records. With access to students’ personal information from the SMARTER Balanced tests and elsewhere, and with the new regulations that gut the protections of federal privacy law, there are very few obstacles in the path of the federal bureaucrats’ knowing — and sharing — everything there is to know about our children.

I encourage the public to read Robbins’ whole testimony. In addition Home School Defense League has a 2013 article on this topic well worth your time.

The Race To The Top grant also required states to construct an enhanced Statewide Longitudinal Database System (SLDS) or P-20 database. P-20 tracks the child from Pre-K through entry into the workforce. No child’s data will go unmined.

Some of the data sets going into the SLDS include items that have been collected on children for a number of years and many of which are benign.

However, some of the data being collected on our kids isn’t so benign, as evidenced by the type of information being collected by an invasive and arguably illegal ‘health assessment form‘ in North Carolina.

Invasive Mining Of Our Children
The North Carolina ‘health assessment form‘ was created by the Dept. of Health and Human Services (DHHS) in conjunction with the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). The form includes querying whether or not the child’s genitals are ‘normal or abnormal’ and various emotional and social development questions.

What’s worse is the signature panel on it, whereby parents are being asked to sign over their child’s medical and developmental history to DPI and DHHS. These two agencies can then contact and discuss your child’s medical history without the parents.

This North Carolina health assessment form also asks for the child’s date of birth, health insurance information and race.

It is unclear if this data is in any one or multiple North Carolina databases, including the SLDS. However, some database has it, since this form is already directly being used to ‘track the fat kids‘.

Since we can ‘track the fat kids’, this data can definitely be used to track the white kids, the black kids, the latino kids… You get the picture — Big Brother for Social Justice.

A.P. Dillon resides in the Triangle area of North Carolina and is the founder of LadyLiberty1885.com.
Her current and past writing can also be found at IJ Review, StopCommonCoreNC.org, Heartland.org and Watchdog Wire NC.
Catch her on Twitter: @LadyLiberty1885

If your life-long ambition is to be a doctor, lawyer, or engineer, a college education is unavoidable. But what if you just want to earn a decent living?

Several weeks ago, my car was at the local dealership to have its timing belt replaced – something that is done at the 60K mark. The technician who had originally told the the service guy that my 2008 Hyundai had a belt rather than a chain discovered that the 2008 model year was split between belts and chains. My car was in the second half of the year and had a chain, which never needs replacing, saving me about $300.00. The dealership, bless their hearts, washed my car for me anyway.

When I picked up my car, I met the young technician who worked on my car. Scott was 28 years old, personable, soft spoken, and clearly loved his job. Okay – he was cute, too.

He used to work at a Hyundai dealership, but was caught off guard by that model year being split between chains and belts.

He’s been an auto technician for 8 years. I asked him if he went to school for his career and he named a well-known technical college. Never one to be shy, I further inquired as to the cost. Surprisingly, it was $28K for the entire course. That’s equivalent to what many people spend for one year in a 4-year college, often graduating with a completely useless degree, and as much as $80K to $100K in school loan debt. It’s takes a long time to pay off that kind of debt when you’re working as a barista at Starbucks.

So at the age of 20 or 21, Scott was already earning a very good income, while the future barista was still having the “experience of a lifetime” in a 4-year college. In terms of salary, Scott earned about $150K, not counting benefits, during those 3 extra years and was doing something he loved.

So why this insistence that everyone must go to college?

Mike Rowe, who runs the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, awards scholarships to students pursuing a career in the skilled trades. He was also the host of the former TV show “Dirty Jobs”, and continues to try raising awareness of what we call “blue collar” jobs.

Just a few days ago, a person wrote a letter to Mike, deriding his approach to “work ethic”, calling it “right wing propaganda.”

Mike’s reply was epic.

A few excerpts:

You wrote that, “people want to work.” In my travels, I’ve met a lot of hard-working individuals, and I’ve been singing their praises for the last 12 years. But I’ve seen nothing that would lead me to agree with your generalization. From what I’ve seen of the species, and what I know of myself, most people – given the choice – would prefer NOT to work. In fact, on Dirty Jobs, I saw Help Wanted signs in every state, even at the height of the recession. Is it possible you see the existence of so many unfilled jobs as a challenge to your basic understanding of what makes people tick?

Last week at a policy conference in Mackinac, I talked to several hiring managers from a few of the largest companies in Michigan. They all told me the same thing – the biggest under reported challenge in finding good help, (aside from the inability to “piss clean,”) is an overwhelming lack of “soft skills.” That’s a polite way of saying that many applicants don’t tuck their shirts in, or pull their pants up, or look you in the eye, or say things like “please” and “thank you.” This is not a Michigan problem – this is a national crisis. We’re churning out a generation of poorly educated people with no skill, no ambition, no guidance, and no realistic expectations of what it means to go to work. source

So back to my question: Why this insistence that everyone must go to college?

Obama would like everyone to have a free community college education, otherwise known as high school grades 13 and 14. Why? And who’s going to pay for this?

High schools also base much of their success on how many of their graduates go on to college. Why?

Who benefits by the student loan industry? Mike mentioned the staggering figure of 1.2 trillion dollars of outstanding student loans.

Our government, by backing these loans, is not only creating future generations of debt slaves, but making the cost of college skyrocket.

Don’t fall for it. If you’re a parent, teach your children skills that may inflame a hankering for a specific trade. Don’t denigrate “blue collar trades”, because when your plumbing goes south, your electric panel breaks, you need a new garage, or even a haircut, you won’t be calling that barista who has a degree in women’s studies.

Adrienne blogs at Adrienne’s Corner on any number of subjects – most of which she knows nothing about.

Like this:

On Facebook I saw a liberal friend call the what-has-she-accomplished? attacks on Hillary Clinton “absurd.” Actually this is the best argument against HRC’s candidacy for president, although I can see why progressives are perplexed by this criticism. Libs’ minds are wired into whether people have the correct opinions and the right intentions. But of course no one cares if your trash collectors are Republicans or Democrats–you only care if that garbage is gone from your driveway once a week.

We’ve all worked with an office know-it-all, the person who can’t hack his own job but has plenty of ideas on how he can do a better job than his boss. All he–or she of course–needs is a promotion and the power to shine. On the rare occasion I’ve seen that complainer move up the ladder, the result was predictable, failure.

Because having great ideas and vision is only part of what is needed to be successful. You need to have skills to convince others that your course of action is the best–and to have patience to maintain alliances if initially confronted with failure. The concept of the philosopher-king is a myth.

Last week on MSNBC, Mark Halperin asked ten Iowa Democrats who are Hillary Clinton supporters to name one of her accomplishments while serving in the Obama administration. They couldn’t name any.

John “Lee” Ruberry

Seven years earlier on the same network, Chris Matthews asked a Texas state senator a similar question about Barack Obama–he was stumped too.

As for Obama’s record as president, we can look at a resurgent an anti-American Russia, the rise of ISIS, green energy failures, and a moribund economy. Obama’s biggest achievement is the still unpopular ObamaCare law–one that could be stripped down next month by the Supreme Court.

Americans: Do you really want four more years of an unaccomplished president? Can we afford it?

As riots go, it was rather boring anyway. Looters were more interested in stealing toilet paper than Air Jordans. What’s up with that?

Let’s talk instead about how prepared you are to take care of yourself in an emergency situation.

Stuff Happens

Stuff happens all the time. I’m not talking about big stuff like a nuke dropping on you. I’m talking about ordinary everyday occurrences.

Let’s suppose the water main breaks and the repairs will take at least a week. You’re at work when it happens and upon returning home. you head out to your local grocery store to buy some water, only to discover the shelves are empty. Oh sure, you can head across town to another store, but is that really what you want to do after a grueling day at work? Do you have a weeks worth of water handy?

Of course, without water the toilet won’t work. Do you have a backup plan for waste disposal?

Another example: a bad storm knocks out the electricity for three weeks. Do you have batteries, candles, or a way to keep warm if it’s winter?

Do you have enough food in your pantry to last at least two weeks if needed? Look at any picture of a grocery store when a big storm is on the way, and you will see empty shelves. It only takes a few hours to wipe out the entire store. Is that how you want to spend your day; standing in lines to buy bread and milk?

Convenience

I’ve found that one of the most satisfying elements of basic preparedness is the convenience of not having to live in a state of panic.

I started canning again last year after having given it up as “too much work.” Now, when I’m too tired or busy to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, I can waltz over to my pantry, grab a jar of canned chicken, and whip up chicken enchiladas or chicken salad in no time at all. Having a jar of homemade beef stew ready to go is soul satisfying.

Saving Money

There is not one shred of doubt that the economy is in the toilet. When the sale price for 80/20 ground beef is over $3.00, and the normal price is often close to $5.00, we’re in big trouble.

The difference between today and the Great Depression is that today the pain is hidden, so we can all go around being happy-clappy and think everything is just fine. No, it’s not. We have a record number of people on food stamps which is nothing more than our modern day soup lines. Food banks are overwhelmed, and the Medicaid rolls are bulging.

The chicken I canned last autumn was purchased at rock bottom prices. The beef stew was made with marked down roasts. The peaches and pears were canned by the case acquired during an annual sale a local store holds every year.

You can keep your money in the bank earning 0% interest, or you can invest it in durable goods where your return will be more like 10% or more.

There are plenty of sites to help you with your preparedness. Visit them and make your life more secure.

The University of Illinois has three campuses, Chicago, Urbana-Champaign, and Springfield. The first one was the professional home of Bill Ayers for nearly two decades. Ayers, a longtime friend of the Obama family, was a member of the Weather Underground, one of the most violent of the radical groups of the 1960s and early 1970s.

Until a writer from the News-Gazette reported on his past with the mid-1970s terror group, the Symbionese liberation Army, former member James Kilgore, from 2009 until this spring, was an adjunct professor at the Urbana-Champaign campus–which is my alma mater.

So far no terrorists have been discovered teaching at the Springfield campus, but that is where former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees when the school was known at Sangamon State University. Churchill, whose invented Native American ancestry came to light when people looked into his background after he referred to the office worker victims of the World Trade Center attack as “Little Eichmanns,” says he built bombs for Ayers’ group.

Ayers retired and Churchill was fired for plagiarism. But Kilgore will be back teaching at the U of I this spring.

The Symbionese Liberation Army is best known for the 1974 kidnapping of media heiress Patty Hearst. Kilgore was a latecomer to the group, which was anything but an army–it never had more than ten terrorists among its roster. Kilgore took part in an SLA bank robbery in 1975 in which a woman making a deposit for her church was murdered. The “army” went AWOL later that year and Kilgore went on the lam, ending up in Zimbabwe and then South Africa. Using a phony name, Kilgore earned a Ph.D in Africa and married a professor, Teresa Barnes. But Kilgore’s life on the lam ended after the 2002 arrest of another longtime SLA fugitive, Kathleen Ann Soliah, who was his girlfriend when they were members. Soliah, who later changed her name to Sara Jane Olson, had briefly lived in Zimbabwe as well. Federal investigators quickly connected the dots and found Kilgore.

The following year Kilgore pleaded guilty to charges of passport fraud, explosives violations, and second degree murder. He served five years in prison, then joined his wife in Urbana, where she was now a University of Illinois professor. It’s unclear how much the school knew of Kilgore’s past, but no criminal background check was performed when he was hired and there was a glaring five-year gap in his resume–Kilgore’s time in prison–that would have given pause to any private-sector human resources manager, as would have his South African university work performed under a different name.

Summary: Murder strikes Bristol in a totally different Dimension or the lack thereof.

Plot: The TARDIS lands in the wrong place (Bristol) and with the wrong exterior dimensions to the point he and Clara can barely get out. The Doctor re-enters and sends Clara off with his psychic paper and sonic screwdriver to try and trace the source which is a set of two dimensional beings responsible for a series of disappearances using the “murals” of the dead as disguises. Clara with the TARDIS now small enough to fit in her purse must take the role of the Doctor. Can she keep everyone alive long enough to both restore the TARDIS and save everyone while she’s doing it?

———————————–

Writing: Jamie Mathieson’s 2nd Doctor Who story is another horror with a touch of Adams family comedy. He keeps it moving while putting the Doctor in Clara’s head both in terms of a camera and earpiece. It’s a winner although with two straight horrors it remains to be seen if he can write something with a different motif vein, but even if every time we see his credit at the start it means another horror at least we know disappointment is unlikely to follow.

Acting: Both & Coleman do their usual good job Capaldi does most of his work alone and Coleman splits time with the supporting cast (mostly Joivan Wade’s “Rigby”) with Coleman doing the better job in an episode that neither by costume or dialogue plays on her sexuality. As far as the supporting cast, nothing special going on, they are adequate but not memorable.

Doctor Who Flashbacks: Shrinking TARDIS Logopolis (4th Doctor) The Man who stops the monsters…The Girl in the Fireplace, I name you… The Shakespeare Code, The wrong people surviving Voyage of the Damned (all 10th doctor) Having to lie The Wedding of River Song (11th Doctor).

Oddities: The scene where the TARDIS is shrunk really brings out how tiny (5′ 2″) Jenna Coleman is, particularly compared to Peter Capaldi’s 6′ height. From the shooting it appears Jenna was the only one actually ever fully inside the prop.Pet Peeves: Since the outside dimension of TARDIS and the inner shell are in different dimensions why would the size of said dimensions have any effect on the power levels?

Great Quote(s)

********************

The Doctor:This is annoying. The Tardis never does this. This is huge! Well, not literally huge. Slightly smaller than usual. Which is huge. Clara:Yes. I get it. You’re excited. When can I go home? The Doctor:Your house isn’t going anywhere. And neither is mine until I get this figured out. Could you not just let me enjoy this moment of not knowing something? I mean, it happens so rarely.

********************RisbyYou never did tell me your name.The Doctor: [speaking to Clara through her earpiece from the Shrunken TARDIS] No time to fraternize. Come on, get rid of him. Clara: I’m er, I’m the Doctor.The Doctor: [EST] In the TARDIS Don’t you dare.Clara:Doctor Oswald. But you can call me Clara. Risby I’m Risby. So er, what are you a doctor of?The Doctor: [EST] Of lies. Clara: Well, I’m usually quite vague about that. I think I just picked the title because it makes me sound important.

*****************************

RisbyIt’s bigger. On the inside.The Doctor: [ST]Do you know, I don’t think that statement’s ever been truer.

The Doctor: [CST] Clara, this is a Vital stage. This little group is currently confused and disorientated. But pretty soon a leader is going to emerge. You need to make sure that leader is you.Clara: I’m on it. George. George, isn’t it? Can you watch that area? If you hear anything, anything moves, you shout, okay?Fenton: He will do no such thing until I get some answers. Who are you? That’s what I want to know. Impersonating a government official. Trespassing on council property.Clara: Seriously? Fenton: Seriously.Clara: Fine, I’ll tell you who I am. I am the one chance you’ve got of staying alive. That’s who I am.

**********************************************************

Clara: Er, what are you doing?RisbyI’m going to ram them, buy you some time.Clara: You’ll die.RisbyYeah, course I’ll die. Now go!Clara: Well, why’d you want to do that?RisbyJust go, okay? Let me do this.Clara: Okay, fine, yeah. And I’ll always remember you.RisbyFine. GreatClara: Cos I was just going to do this. [attaches hairband to control to hold it in place] No driver required. And I really like that hair band, but I suppose I’ll just take it, will I? And every time I look at it, I’ll remember the hero who died to save it.

***************************************************

The Doctor: I tried to talk. I want you to remember that. I tried to reach out, I tried to understand you, but I think that you understand us perfectly. And I think you just don’t care. And I don’t know whether you are here to invade, infiltrate or just replace us. I don’t suppose it really matters now. You are monsters. That is the role you seem determined to play. So it seems I must play mine. [Dramatically exits the TARDIS] The man that stops the monsters. I’m sending you back to your own dimension. Who knows? Some of you may even survive the trip. And, if you do, remember this. You are not welcome here. This plane is protected. I am the Doctor. And I name you The Boneless.

Final Verdict: Four stars. Solid episode

Ranking of Season: 5th of 8. That “monster” speech is going to get a lot of youtube replays.

Nearly 12 years of Democratic rule in Illinois has brought debt, continued corruption, the nation’s worst-funded state pension system, and high unemployment.

Most polls show the race between incumbent Pat Quinn and Republican newcomer Bruce Rauner to be a dead heat, although the latest poll on the race shows Quinn with only 40 percent support–which is a terrible position for ant incumbent to be in.

Quinn of course does not have a decent record to run on, so he is taking a page from Obama 2012 playbook by attacking Rauner for being a successful rich businessman. The Chicago Democrat, who twice was Rod Blagojevich’s running mate, narrowly defeated his Republican challenger in 2010, Bill Brady, who ran a awful campaign. Back then Quinn stumped for a slight increase in the state income tax, but in a lame duck session, the Democrat-controlled General Assembly passed a “temporary” 67 percent hike in the personal income tax rate and a 45 percent hump in the corporate rate.

Quinn now claims that he never said that his tax hikes, which are stifling Illinois’ economy, were temporary–but videotape, unlike Quinn, does not lie. The tax increases expire at the end of the year–but Quinn plans another lame duck assault on Prairie State wallets.

Rauner instead envisions tax reform, a loosening of Illinois’ onerous workers compensation system, and extensive pension reform as part of his rescue plan for the state’s 12.8 million residents. He looks to Indiana’s successful former governor Mitch Daniels as a role model for a Rauner administration.

Three years ago the Chicago Sun-Times said they would stop endorsing candidates, but yesterday the paper all but said they were getting back into the game only so it could declare its support for Rauner. The paper is making no other endorsements this fall.

I held my nose and visited Quinn’s campaign site and clicked on the endorsements link. It’s dominated by unions and other predictably liberal groups. But according to my research and Quinn’s site, as of this writing, not a single Illinois newspaper has endorsed the Chicago Democrat for another term.

It’s time for the rest of the Land of Lincoln to wake up for Morning in Illinois and throw Quinn out of office.

President Obama may soon find out what how it feels to be un-upped by Canada in a hockey-style shootout.

Since his inauguration nearly six years ago, Obama has been dragging his feet in regards to approving the Keystone XL pipeline. The proposed pipeline will bring much-needed petroleum from our friends in Alberta in Canada to the United States, which will lessen our need to import oil from hostile regimes such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. I can’t imagine America buying oil from the Islamic State, but more oil on the market means cheaper prices, which will of course harm ISIS and bolster our national security.

The northern segment of Keystone will pass through the Dakotas and Nebraska. There is a smattering of local opposition in the Cornhusker State and some legal obstacles, but let’s be clear: Obama, the man who bragged earlier this year that he doesn’t need Congress to make things happen because, “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” would have found a way to break ground for Keystone XL by now if that’s what he wanted.

But Obama is of course more concerned about the needs of his wealthy environmentalist donors, who either believe that the era of fossil fuels is over or that the use of this Canadian oil will contribute to global warming. Obama, who once promised to heal the planet, is on the verge of being outmaneuvered.

TransCanada Corp., the mover behind Keystone, is strongly considering an-all Canada pipeline for the Alberta petroleum, Energy East, the terminus of which will be at St. John, New Brunswick on the Atlantic Ocean. The oil can be shipped from there to America or to western Europe, which will be welcomed with open spigots by countries fed up with buying petroleum from Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Bloomberg News is reporting that the supporters of Energy East are very confident that it will be built. A proposed western Canadian pipeline could still be constructed, although that route faces opposition from some Canadian First Nations people.

But if Keystone is built, it will mean up to 40,000, good paying–and are you reading this Obama?–union jobs. If the new pipeline from Alberta never crosses American soil, those jobs will taken by Canadians. Meanwhile, we have to go back to the sad Jimmy Carter years to find a time where the American labor participation rate has been lower than it is now.

I can imagine Obama looking north soon, as Jay Gatsby did from West Egg at the green light at the end of Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s pier, at those thousands of new jobs north of the border.

The last words are for the environmentalists: Despite your numerous protests and your arm-twisting of Obama, that oil is going to be pumped from the sands of Alberta whether you like it or not. Your Canadian War is over.

Today if you go to CNN, MSNBC & even Fox you will find stories about the McStrike where fast food workers are DEMANDING that McDonalds pay them $15 an hour for making burgers.

While said “strike” is getting plenty of play in media it’s a different story if you actually go to a McDonalds that is not in the range of their cameras, like say Fitchburg

If you go to places like this you will find that the workers, the management and the customers would have absolutely no idea any of this was going on if it wasn’t for CNN playing on the TV (because God forbid we get a bite to eat without cable playing).

So in honor of this media created BS I’m putting up this post complete with my own McSelfie risking the wrath of the SEIU and 4chan hackers everywhere.

I invite you to do the same.

Exit question, what are the odds the MSM will give next years March For Life which draws tens of thousands in the dead of winter the same coverage they give this? I’d say about equal to the odds any sane McDonalds owner will start paying $15 an hour to flip burgers.

Update: Oddly enough the same people lionizing this strike didn’t jump at my three step process to prove you can make profits available to business paying $15 an hour:

Cynicism is a bad choice. Hope is the better choice. Hope is what gives us courage. Hope is what gave soldiers courage to storm a beach. Hope is what gives young people the strength to march for women’s rights, and worker’s rights, and civil rights, and voting rights, and gay rights, and immigration rights.

Let’s go back fifty years or so, to the days when union activist Cesar Chavez was advocating farmworkers’ rights:

Mr. Chavez, perhaps the best-known Mexican-American activist, fought for better wages and conditions for workers but held complex and evolving views on the status of unauthorized immigrants, some of which would be at odds with the changes many Hispanics and others are seeking today.

These days, Chávez is revered among Mexican-American activists and others as a civil rights figure. Yet that’s not who he was. Chavez was primarily a labor leader, and so one of his main concerns was keeping illegal immigrants from competing with and undercutting union members either by accepting lower wages or crossing picket lines. When he pulled workers out of the field during a strike, the last thing he wanted was a crew of illegal immigrant workers showing up to do those jobs and take away his leverage.

So Chavez decided to do something about it. According to numerous historical accounts, Chavez ordered union members to call the Immigration and Naturalization Service and report illegal immigrants who were working in the fields so that they could be deported. Some UFW officials were also known to picket INS offices to demand a crackdown on illegal immigrants.

Legally, of course, no one has a right to violate our immigration laws, whether the Obama administration enforces them or not. So what does the president have in mind here? It seems clear that Obama isn’t suggesting that immigrants are somehow being denied their actual rights under American law. Certainly he made no such explicit claim. Rather, his point appears to be that some people–not everyone in the world presumably, but some unspecified group of people–have a “right” to enter the United States, or stay here, even though it is illegal to do so under U.S. law, as long as Barack Obama opposes the law in question.

“Immigration rights”, for whom? It doesn’t matter, as long as Obama’s talking points are repeated.

For a Labor Day speech, however, it’s worth remembering that Chavez recognized that flooding the labor market with low-wage, low-skill laborers worked against his unionized farmworkers.

Fausta Rodriguez Wertz writes on U.S. and Latin American news, politics and culture at Fausta’s Blog.

It’s hard to fathom now, but one of the major issues of the 2012 presidential campaign was Mitt Romney’s 15-year leadership of the Boston-based private equity firm Bain Capital, which he co-founded.

Two years later President Obama, who of course defeated Romney in ’12, faces multiple crises, including scandals involving IRS targeting of conservative groups, deadly waiting lists at VA hospitals, as well as a collapsing Iraq, Russia’s seizure of Ukraine, a still stagnant economy, and 300,000 illegal alien children crossing over our lightly watched southern border.

None of these hotspots have anything to do with Bain Capital, other than, remotely, the rotten Obama economy.

Under Romney, Bain rescued many companies from failure. And it provided seed money for new firms such as Staples, which now operates over two-thousand stores. Sure, a few of Bain’s investments didn’t work out, but failure–as well as success–is how capitalism works.

However, Romney left Bain in 1999 to engineer his greatest turnaround, the rescue of the scandal-plagued 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. He then moved on and was elected governor of Massachusetts.

During the campaign, a liberal super PAC, Priorities USA, blamed Bain Capital and Romney in a video for the death from cancer of a woman after her husband was laid off from a Bain-owned company. That claim was almost immediately debunked, yet Obama only half-heartedly disavowed it.

Obama and his surrogates were partaking in an old Saul Alinksy tactic–straw man attacks.

Earlier this week, Glenn Reynolds gave some great advice to the GOP in his column at USA Today which blasted Obama and the Democrats pay gap hypocrisy.

If I were the GOP, I’d start running attack ads in these legislators’ home states, quoting President Obama and asking why these Democrats hate women. It just might work — and it would certainly drive home a useful lesson about bogus statistics. Which President Obama — who is now even attacking unequal dry cleaning bills — could use.

And Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska pays women in his office 82 cents for every dollar that a man makes.

I’m adding North Carolina’s Kay Hagan to that list.

Hagan pays her male staffers an average of $15, 343 higher than her female ones. Page 955 of this report is where you can find Hagan’s staff salaries. According to the Washington Free Beacon, Democrat Senate female staffers made 91 cents on the dollar compared to male staffers and the female staff salary was an average of $5,500 less in the last year. Free Beacon noted that in 2011 and 2012, that was also the case. Hagan’s pay gap is nearly triple that. Tsk, tsk Kay…Kay Hagan is quite the hypocrite.

Glenn Reynolds’s column deftly mocks the gender pay gap theme. It should be mocked, it’s ridiculous. The Democrats want everyone to suck in a breath and say ‘how awful! It must be a Republican’s fault!’. A couple years ago, people did. Then the debunking happened and the glaring hypocrisy was exposed.

In trying to resurrect the pay gap theme, Obama’s base and the media are likely banging their heads on their desks. They’ve already had to defend this theme and they lost. Now they’re not fighting it, they’re joining in on the denouncing and re-debunking. I think we’re going to see a failure to re-ignite the old attacks. They just don’t play anymore. Just to underscore this point… Spin, Jay, spin!

Hope and Change!

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A.P. Dillon (Lady Liberty 1885), is a Conservative minded wife and mother living in the Triangle area of North Carolina. A.P. Dillon founded the blog LadyLiberty1885.com in 2009. After the 2012 election, she added an Instapundit style blog called The ConMom Blog. Mrs. Dillon’s writing, in addition to Da Tech Guy’s Magnificent 7, can also be found at StopCommonCoreNC.org, WatchdogWireNC and WizBang. Non-political writing projects include science fiction novellas that are, as of yet, unpublished. Her current writing project is a children’s book series.

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She was the Seattle Cartoonist who suggested ” Everybody draw Mohammad Day” to protest the restriction of speech.

It wasn’t long before a FATWA was put out on her, She apologized for her actions but it didn’t matter. As far as radical Islam was concerned she had blasphemed, she went into hiding for fear of her life and remains so to this day.

This came to mind when I heard about Brendan Eich who was just forced out as CEO of Mozilla

Eich isn’t another CEO, he is the man who he created Javascript.

But those credentials were not good enough. You see six years ago he donated $1000 to the campaign to pass Proposition 8 which outlawed Gay Marriage in California or would have if a judge had not overturned it.

That donation when brought to the press brought a roar of media & activist generated uproar.

Mind you Mr. Eich’s position was not unique 7,001,084 voted to pass the law and at the time of his donation he had the same position on gay marriage as Barack Obama did.

But that didn’t matter so Mozilla today issued this statement on their blog:

Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. He’s made this decision for Mozilla and our community.

Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality.

The irony of course being they are saying this while not allowing comments on the post where the announcement takes place.

the Prop 8 donor list has already been used as a blacklist to ruin other lives and careers. Vote the wrong way, and the brownshirts come for you, simple as that.

The only difference between the pair is the removal of Mr. Eich was done without threats of violence, but rest assured those days are not far away.

Count on it

Final thought: If I was a young ambitious lawyer looking for a big payday and publicity I’d find a few Christians in companies like this willing to sue for the creation of a “hostile work environment”. You will be amazed at how fast the worm will turn once companies realize they are susceptive to such suits from a pool of people who represents 77% of the population of the country.

“It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them.

“Then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.”

Pity the Land of Lincoln–four of its last eight elected governors have been convicted of federal crimes–one of them, Rod Blagojevich, is still in prison. He’s inmate 40892-424. Blago’s successor and two-time running mate, fellow Chicago Democrat Pat Quinn, is running for a second full term.

The Republican nominee is Bruce Rauner, a multi-millionaire venture capitalist who survived a surprisingly tough primary battle last week over state Sen. Kirk Dillard, who is best known outside of Illinois for his appearance in a 2007 Barack Obama campaign commercial.

Running against “corrupt union bosses” has been a theme of Rauner’s campaign. Public-sector unions have destroyed Illinois, which once enjoyed a rare American economic trifecta–it was an industrial, financial, and agricultural powerhouse. The Prairie State now suffers from America’s second highest unemployment rate, nearly $6 billion in unpaid bills, and over $100 billion in public employee pension debt.

Quinn’s “temporary” 67 percent income tax hike was supposed to fix all three problems–but it failed, failed, failed.

Since he has no record to run on, Quinn unleashed an Obama-style class warfare attack on Rauner immediately after the primary, focusing on the GOPer’s muddled stance on raising the state’s minimum wage and businessman’s immense wealth. Last week in a rare press conference, state House Speaker and party boss Michael Madigan, yet another Chicago Democrat, proposed a millionaire income tax.

Four years ago, off-topic attacks on the anti-abortion stance of his Republican opponent Bill Brady served Quinn well, he eked out a win over the downstate state senator who ran a sloppy campaign and who was largely AWOL in the key battlefield in all Illinois elections–Chicago’s suburbs. Rauner is pro-choice and a moderate on gay issues.

And this year’s Republican nominee lives in the suburbs and as he proved in the primary election, Rauner won’t let attacks on him go answered–and he’s willing to spend his own money to do so.

Cutting taxes and attacking what former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg identified as the toxic “labor-electoral complex” will be the heart of the Rauner general election campaign.

AFSCME anti-Quinn poster

What will Big Labor do? Line up behind Quinn? The surprising answer is ‘maybe.’ Quinn can count on the support of trade unions such as the United Auto Workers, but the public-sector unions, who contributed over $5 million to his campaign for the 2010 race, might ignore Quinn this time. Government unions donated over $1 million to the Dillard campaign, and the public-sector unions are angry with Quinn for signing a pension fix bill late last year, one that Rauner says does not go far enough. Those unions are suing Quinn to have the new pension funding law overturned– they claim it is unconstitutional.

But the public-sector unions will probably continue to run anti-Rauner ads. The Illinois Freedom PAC, largely funded by government labor groups, spent over $3 million on ads attacking Rauner during the run-up to the primary. Democratic crossover votes for Dillard almost succeeded in Big Labor’s goal of stopping Rauner.

In November Quinn faces the threat of Democratic crossover votes ending his political career. Newton N. Minow, John F. Kennedy’s FCC chairman who famously dubbed television “a vast wasteland,” quoted his old boss when declaring his support for Rauner on Thursday, “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.”

Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.

it won’t matter to gun manufacturers if you’re running an ad like this:

because, with that first statement in mind, That ad will play like this speech…

“The company is making the move as an expansion of capacity, production and research,” a source told Yellowhammer on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “The demand for Remington products has skyrocketed recently, for obvious reasons, so they need to increase their production capacity. They will be expanding their research capabilities with the Alabama plant, too.”

The initial estimated impact on Alabama’s economy will be roughly $87 million.

…that’s a lot. While the Cuomo team spins:

Some are misinformed, others gleefully spreading misinformation, but to be clear, no Remington jobs are leaving NY.

“I’d be more than excited, hysterical, yes I’d be very excited,” said Robby Easterling at JC’s Guns and Tackle. Easterling said it doesn’t surprise him that Remington may have its eye on Huntsville. ”They know we believe in our 2nd Amendment rights and we stand by them.”

A union official said Saturday the Remington Arms Co.’s decision to open a manufacturing plant in Alabama does not bode well for Ilion, and he’s blaming New York’s SAFE Act restrictions on assault weapons. “It can’t be good,” said Fran Madore, president of United Mine Workers Local 717, which represents 1,180 of the 1,300 Remington employees in Ilion. “How can it be good?”

“Mandating firearms micro- stamping will restrict the ability of Remington to expand business in the Empire State,” company chief strategy officer Stephen Jackson Jr. wrote to Cuomo. “Worse yet, Remington could be forced to reconsider its commitment to the New York market altogether rather than spend the astronomical sums of money needed to completely reconfigure our manufacturing and assembly processes.” Jackson insisted that law enforcement, gun retailers and “law-abiding consumers throughout New York — if not the entire country” would be directly affected. Senate bill sponsor Jose Peralta dismissed Remingtons warning as “just another tactic being used to try and block microstamping, which is supported by many crime-fighters.”

Now it’s true, Remington hasn’t moved their current jobs in NY, but once there is a brand new plant operating in Alabama it won’t be very hard for do so, will it?

But it’s no big deal who needs those Pro-Gun conservatives in NY Anyway, plus you don’t want the people of NY to becomejob lockeddo you?

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It’s Monday and the quest for the #350 to pay the pay DaMagnificent Seven and the less than magnificent mortgage continues currently needing 12 tip jar hits at $25 to get it done this week.

If you would to help Just click on DaTipJar below

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The Wall Street Journal reports that the United Auto Workers’ effort to unionize the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee fell short. Had the UAW been successful, the VW plant would have been the first foreign-owned plant in a Southern state to be unionized.

The story behind the unionization drive, and its failure, is rather remarkable. Volkswagen started the ball rolling by wanting to implement what it calls a “works council”, a group of line workers which negotiates with management on the operations of the plant. It has those “work councils” at most of its plants worldwide, in both union and non-union shops. However, to implement the concept in the US, it was convinced it needs the workers represented by an outside union.

Enter the UAW. Despite temporarily gaining a majority stake in Chrysler and getting a significant (and now controlling) stake in General Motors thanks to the Obama administration, their membership has been shrinking along with the vast majority of private-sector unions.

They have been actively targeting foreign-owned plants for unionization, with no success south of the Mason-Dixon line where most of these plants have been popping up. They went so far as to collaborate with their foreign counterparts, including Germany’s IG Metall, the main union dealing with Volkswagen in Germany.

Unlike most companies, Volkswagen encouraged the UAW effort. In an unusual move, it allowed UAW organizers to campaign in the plant, and coordinated its public statements with the UAW during the campaign.

That, however, wasn’t enough to overcome long-standing sentiment against unionization in Tennessee, as well as a well-funded campaign that pointed out that typical UAW tactics are not exactly compatible with the “works council” concept and said that unionization would turn Chattanooga into South Detroit. Some of the workers who voted against the UAW also cited the heavy tilt in UAW political donations toward Democrat candidates and causes.

Now that there is a 1-year “cooling off” period where the UAW cannot attempt to organize at VW’s Chattanooga plant, perhaps it is time to take a look at the archaic labor laws that seem to prohibit the creation of “work councils” outside the suffocating regime of unions.

It’s Saturday and with just a few hours to make payroll this week DaTipJar moved only $2 leaving us almost $250 of our weekly goal.

We only need 10 readers hitting DaTipJar for $25 to make that goal and get us closer to being on track this month.

If not then we will be going into our 3rd week way behind on both the Mortgage & Da Magnificent Seven.

Can you help

And now there is another reason to kick in on a more permanent way

Please consider being a subscriber. Only 57 subscribers @ at $20 a month are necessary to secure the cost of DaMagnificent Seven & my monthly mortgage on a permanent basis AND if you so at the $25 level
you can receive one of several Exclusive Original Chris Muir high Res Graphics of original members of DaTechGuy’s Magnificent Seven Gang. like the one on the right

Please specify which of the eight hi res (including myself you wish to receive) Subscribe at $50 a month and receive all eight. Subscribe at $100 a month and get all 8 wanted posters high res graphics plus the high res version of all of us exclusively created for subscribers of DaTechGuy blog by Chris Muir himself!

Yesterday, the January 2014 jobs report was released. The toplines were a mixed bag, with a less-than-expected 113,000 jobs added on a seasonally-adjusted basis, to bring the total number of jobs to 137,499,000, and a methodology-influenced 638,000 increase in employment on a seasonally-adjusted basis, to bring the total number of employed to 145,224,000. That drove the unemployment rate down by 0.1 percentage point to 6.6% and the labor force participation rate and employment-population ratio up by 0.2 percentage points to 63.0% and 58.8% respectively.

Over the course of the last year, using unadjusted numbers, the economy added 2,238,000 jobs to 133,396,000, the number of employed increased by 1,912,000 to 143,526,000, the labor force participation rate fell by 1.3 percentage points to 62.5%, and the employment-population ratio increased by 0.2 percentage points to 58.1%.

Since Communists and socialists like to use five-year plans, and we have just passed the five-year point of the Obama Presidency, it is high time to review the performance of the economy on the jobs front during his tenure. Congratulations, Mr. President; your economy produced an unseasoned 3,431,000 net new jobs during your 5 years in office. Of course, that is only enough to provide jobs for just over 1 in 4 of the additional 12,176,000 added to the civilian noninstitutional population, otherwise known as the potential workforce, during your tenure. It also is 804,000 fewer jobs than existed in January 2008, which on a seasonal basis was the peak month before the Great Recession and your election.

The news is worse on the actual number of people employed. That only increased by an unseasoned 3,090,000 between January 2009 and January 2014, and is over 1 million below what it was in January 2008. As a percentage of population, the unseasoned employment-population ratio dropped from 59.8% in January 2009 to 58.1% in January 2014. That is, other than the other 4 Januarys of the Obama Presidency, the worst January since 1984 (57.7%). On a sesonally-adjusted basis, the 58.8% employment-population ratio in January 2014 is worse than every month between January 1984 (58.8%) and September 2009 (58.7%).

Of course, you and your party see that as a good thing considering your response to the Congressional Budget Office report finding that over 2 million full-time equivalent positions won’t exist in 2024 because of PlaceboCare.

The younger generations took the past 5 years directly in the shorts. The number of employed among the “prime workforce”, those between the ages of 25 and 54, decreased by 1,409,000 on an unseasoned basis over those 5 years to 94,512,000. That is, other than the prior four Januarys, the lowest January employment number since 1998 (94,196,000). As a percentage of the population, the 75.94% employment-population ratio among 25-54 year olds is a drop of 0.51 percentage points from January 2009’s 76.45%, and is, other than the 4 Januarys in between, the lowest January since 1985 (75.7%). On a seasonally-adjusted basis, the 76.5% employment-population ratio among 25-54 year olds is the lowest between June 1985 (76.4%) and March 2009 (76.2%).

It gets worse the younger one gets, at least in terms of percentage of the population actually working. The unseasoned employment-population ratio of those between 20 and 24, at 60.5%, is a drop of 1.8 percentage points from January 2009’s 62.3%, and is, other than the 4 Januarys in between, the lowest January since 1965 (59.1%). The last time prior to June 2009 (62.2%) the seasonally-adjusted employment-population ratio among those between 20 and 24 years old was as low as the current 62.3% was June 1971 (61.0%).

The worst fate is reserved for those just leaving high school, the 18-19 year olds. Only 33.4% of them on an unseasoned basis were working, a drop of 6.0 percentage points from January 2009’s 39.4%, and the worst January since records began in 1948. The seasonally-adjusted 35.8% employment-population ratio among 18-19 year olds is the 4th-worst month on record, behind only June 2010 (35.8%), June 2011 (35.7%) and July 2011 (35.5%).

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It’s Saturday and with under 3 hours to go for the pay week the till stands at $155.

That means it will only take 8 of you kicking in $25 to get us to this weeks’ goal.

With a new writer premiering this week and a 2nd starting next week and the CPAC bills soon to be on the card it’s vital to stay ahead of the game.

Your tip jar hit can help me do this. Please consider kicking in.

Only 55 3/4 more subscribers @ at $20 a month are necessary to secure the cost of DaMagnificent Seven & my monthly mortgage on a permanent basis. (one extra one will pay for our newest writer author Tim Imholt
) If you subscribe at the $25 level or more there is a new premium that you can receive which I will be announcing next week.

The high temperature tomorrow is expected to reach -11 in Chicago tomorrow. That’s without the windchill. We may face 48 hours of subzero weather for the first time in twenty years. About two feet of snow has fallen since New Year’s Eve where I live in Morton Grove, Illinois.

It’s snowing here as I begin this post.

Welcome to global warming–2014 edition.

Yes, I’m aware that a week of weather does not define our climate. But today’s a good day to delve into the White House global warming agenda and its War on Coal. Forty-five percent of our electricity comes from coal, which is an abundant domestic energy resource. Depending on who is doing the counting, anywhere from 207 to 285 coal plants are scheduled to close in the next decade. Citing climate change and its clean air regulations President Obama’s radicalized EPA–not our elected Congress–is behind the shuttering of these plants.

The ripple effects of the War on Coal will be widespread. With fewer coal plants, obviously there will be less need for coal miners. In a letter to the president, Democratic and Republican state legislators in Kentucky declared, “Coal is not just an energy source, it’s a way of life.”

Coal train, Colorado plains

You can make the same argument about coal and the rail industry.

Few commodities are as essential to railroads and railroad jobs as coal. Fully 25 percent of railroad revenue, one-in-five railroad jobs and 40 percent of freight cars owe their existence to coal, according to the Association of American Railroads.

When less energy is generated, the cost of it goes up–of course that’s basic economics. Obama’s climate change agenda is not just a war on coal and other fossil fuels, it’s also a war on American prosperity.

Last week the news was good, Unemployment down to 7% 200,000 new jobs, the first real sign of the business cycle re-asserting itself.

On simply anecdotal evidence I do finally see some signs of recovery. I see a lot of help wanted signs as I drive through Fitchburg, Leominster (mostly at places like McDonalds & Walgreens etc but that’s a big change from just a couple of years ago when you couldn’t find a job to save your life providing that even a democrat administration can’t outlaw the business cycle.

Such news would normally be a strong selling point for the administration, but unfortunately nobody believes them.

O’Reilly:Don’t you ever say that again about your fathers, because they are not cowards. You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there’s nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to. I have never had this kind of courage. Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee anything will ever come of it. This is bravery. That’s why I never even started anything like that… that’s why I never will.

The Magnificent Seven 1960

I have been known to regularly complain about our current culture, yesterday a poll came out that confirmed my worst suspicions

Mind you this is polling people who are unemployed and asking if they want a job, apparently this has been a trend for a while.

Regis Barnichon and Andrew Figura divide up those out of the labor force using a simpler standard: whether or not the person says they want a job. And they uncover an interesting previously unnoticed trend: As a share of all those “not in the labor force,” the number of people who want a job has been generally declining since the early 1980s. Three decades ago, more than 10% wanted a job; on the eve of the latest recession, the share dipped below 6%.

And who are these people who don’t want to work a big chunk are the young:

The decline among young people mirrors a long-term decline in employment rates among young adults, especially teenagers. The reasons for that aren’t entirely clear, but may include a rising focus on college attendance, the disappearance of many low-skilled jobs and cultural factors that put less of a premium on working while in school.

Remember Nancy Pelosi telling college students that ObamaCare would set them free from their need to get a job?

And she’s not alone, particularly here in Massachusetts

Gov. Patrick constantly beats the “there’s no shame in being on the dole” drum. The GOP’s modest reductions in the massive surge of food stamp spending has sent Democrats into “you’re gonna kill the children” spasms.

Of course there was a time when we lived with traditional American Values whose source was the Judeo Christian Culture where the idea of being idle was a source of disgrace, when the idea that work ANY work was more honorable than not.

But nature arbors a vacuum. When you throw out a culture of hard work and responsibility a different culture rises up in its place, and that culture might not be so enthusiastic about getting up in the morning and bagging groceries, working in a Pizza joint.

And it goes without saying such people in that kind of culture aren’t even going to begin thinking about starting their own business and working to generate a customer base.

Why is this the case, well as Dennis Prager put it even conservative parents have underestimate how college and society changes their kids:

One is that most parents with traditional American and Judeo-Christian values have not thought it necessary to articulate these values to their children on a regular basis. They have assumed that there is no need to because society at large holds those values, or it did so throughout much of American history. Villages do indeed raise children. And when the village shares parents’ values, the parents don’t have to do the difficult work of inculcating these values.

But the village — American society — has radically changed.

You can’t count on anyone else to teach your children, you have to do it yourself. You’re the parent you have to carry the responsibility.

If you want to know why we need to fight the culture wars, this is it.

A postscript. Was talking to a customer when the subject of my sons came up and how I’d like them to meet a nice girl, there was a young lady there who is 21 years old and has 4 Jobs She and her friend asked about my boys. When they heard one had a job and the other had two her friend said: ” Go for the one with two jobs.”

Plot: Both the Silurians and the Humans have Hostages, but can Amy and Nasreen negotiate a permanent peace before the fearful and the warlike slaughter them all?

Writing: Chris Chibnall gave us a lot to characters to think about it part one and now he adds a bunch more on the Silurian side, even better he doesn’t simply reflexively make them noble and the humans warlike. There is so much to digest here and that’s before the huge twists in the end. I really think Chihnall could write a whole Big Finish side series on the Silurians and their civilization and make it work. I think the ending was a tad contrived but that likely was required for the story arc of the season.

Acting: Once again until the near end this episode really engages the supporting cast over the main cast, but both Amy & Rory get big parts and some big scenes. The Doctor becomes more prominent about half why through but once again it all works.

Oddities: This is a pivot point in time? If that’s true it threatens to almost totally re-write every single episode of the series that takes place after the year 2200 and since when is Ambrose a woman’s name?

Pet Peeves: Yeah, when designing an underground sanctuary for my race to survive the very first think I make sure I install before anything else is a way to deliver poison that would wipe out the entire population. It’s like the chompers from Galaxy Quest.

Great Quote(s):

Rory Williams:Amy, I thought I’d lost you.

Amy Pond:What, ’cause I got sucked into the Earth? You’re so clingy.

The Doctor: In future, when you talk about this, you tell people that there was a chance but you were so much less than the best of humanity.

Final Verdict: Four Stars, once again a 2nd part better than the first.

Ranking in Series 5 to date 6th out of 9 Again it is only the quality of the episodes before it that forces this episode to where it is and if Alex Kingston was the least bit worse it would kick Flesh & Stone out of 5th.

Note to college co-eds: if you spend your years learning about vibrators, dildos, and how the patriarchy is scared of your amazing sexuality, then do not be surprised when strip clubs are the only places that will offer you paid employment when you graduate. (Also be aware that shaking your chest in a rich man’s face for money is a step up from what you did in college, which is to shake your chest in soon-to-be-rich accounting major’s face for free.) A final word of advice: do not let your paying clients know that most women your age do not charge for such services, under the belief that giving them out for free is “empowering”. You do not need to study economics to feel the effects of it.

Okay, that was harsh. But I spent my college years studying engineering, and, not surprisingly, I had an engineering job upon graduation. As much as “feminist” college co-eds may beg to differ, the respectable job market prefers to hire women who spent their Friday nights learning surface chemistry and thermodynamics, not those who spent their time learning about the myriad uses for butt plugs or who “explored their sexuality.” I’m wondering how those interviews would go….

Interviewer: What skills would you bring to the company, which focuses on financial planning?

Co-Ed: I know a lot about vibrators and how they free women from repressive, Judeo-Christian sexual mores; surely, there’s a transferable skill there.

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As you know for the Last two years since the start of my radio show and the end of my unemployment (and failure to get employed in my tech field) I have devoted my energies to turning this blog and my show DaTechGuy on DaRadio into a viable business.

I have been working very hard behind the scenes and devoted a great amount of time to these things culminating in the Syndication that has now begun

And of course I’ve interviewed the ordinary voter wherever I’ve gone, because they are the people who really makes the difference in America.

In short you would have to go to Stacy McCain to find a blogger that has hit more places and done more things to give you the best possible coverage that I can afford to give.

It’s been done without benefit of a TV network or a magazine gig or a newspaper check. What I’ve been able to do has been what you have been willing and able to pay for.

Now the question is asked (and it’s was being asked by DaWife even before her hours were being cut) can this life be enough to pay the bills that her job can’t?

Well I’ve crunched the numbers and it’s really up to you.

The simple goal is to earn enough to pay the basic house bills so that the roof stays on, the oil gets delivered the lights are on and there is gas in the car to cover events in a 150 diameter. That number is $50 every weekday and $50 on a weekend basically $300 a week.

That doesn’t count special trips, such as CPAC (About $1000) or Blogcon or any other big events that’s I’d have to fly or rent a car for but if something big like that comes up, then I’ll ask about it.

I’m sure the last thing any of you want is me constantly asking for your dollars, but I’m not Andrew Sullivan. I draw a 5 or 6 figure living in 24 hours on going independent.

So here is what I’m going to do, I’m going to have a weekly and a monthly goal

I’m going to put up a monthly Tip Jar Goal of $1200 and in the first post of each day I’m going to include DaTipJar in the post with the follow-up from the previous day. I’ll include additional updates in the last week of the month to show where the needle in the hopes of getting me over the top each month.

I’m of course still going to be hustling, selling airtime on the show as best I can but until the show reaches the point were I don’t have to worry every month if the mortgage is going to be paid.

$14,400 a year (before taxes) isn’t much to live on, it’s half of what I got in unemployment and 1/3 of what I was earning before I lost my job. and I don’t expect (but will happily welcome) to manage it in one or two tip jar hits, but at $50 a day or $300 a week it can be done, at least if you, dear readers, think I’m earning it.

To those of you who have kicked in and subscribed thanks so much for getting me this far. To all who choose to do so in the future either via DaTipJar

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Glenn Reynolds discusses marginal tax rates at Instapundit. High marginal tax rates encourage people to ‘go Galt’ when those people can obtain extra income with extra effort (e.g. freelancers, salesmen on commission, small business owners contemplating opening for more days or hours): very often, they will prefer leisure time to the dwindling return on investment (investment of time, effort, and risk).

Of course, that is all predicated on being able to make ends meet: those who cannot earn enough to cover expenses will do whatever it takes to earn enough to cover the shortfall. A government can thus raise the marginal tax rates without repercussions: a person in need of an extra dollar with earn $90 and let the government take $89 in taxes, if the alternative is starving, losing a job for lack of gasoline to get to said job, or not having a roof over the family’s head.

Counterintuitively, a government that is heavily in debt, or a government that wants to purchase votes with freebies to certain classes of people, wants the productive class to be irresponsible with its money. The housing bubble, the inflation in food prices, the higher education bubble, skyrocketing health insurance costs, and higher energy costs prevent the productive class from going Galt with its marginal income.

ObamaCare is particularly pernicious: force the entire productive class to funnel large sums of money into health care spending via gold-plated plans that subsidise the non-productive class, and you’ve given people the choice between being eternally yoked to the plow or dying for lack of health care. (Amanda Marcotte relishes the idea that we are all forced to pay for her sex life as a cost of insuring ourselves and our kids against cancer and heart failure.)

Rising food prices (influenced in no small part by the federal government, e.g. the ethanol mandate, various carrots and sticks of subsidies) yoke all people to the plow: work more, letting the government take its pound of flesh in the process, or starve.

The housing bubble and the higher education bubble have the same effect: those who work for a living are forced to work much harder to cover the same costs as a previous generation. Prof. Reynold’s correspondents are all in the position of having paid off houses and student loans – the spoils of having been born in a time wherein a college education cost about 500 minimum-wage hours per year and a house could be purchased on husband’s salary while the wife stayed at home. The younger generation (my generation) is yoked to the plow, forced to tend to as many of the government’s fields as it desires.

Do you need a conspiracy in order to create this? No – you just need badly aligned incentives, i.e. a rapacious government with unsustainable levels of spending and debt, as well as the power to influence the price of food, housing, education, and energy. But as long as the government cannot live within its means, it would prefer us to not live within ours, so that we will have to constantly increase our means, regardless of what the government will take from such increased production.

Even if you add in all possible “indirect” jobs that could be attributed to this subsidy flurry, it still works out to $1.63 million in subsidies per job created, according to the report.

Just to be clear, this isn’t some taxpayers federation or Republican Party group writing this scathing review. This is the US government itself.

Consider that $1.63 million dollar figure. Imagine a WPA style program such as busy work/cleanup that a city might normally not do because of regular budget. Say 3 ten man crews at $30,000 each plus another $10K in side expenses and taxes. Add a chief to run each crew, say $50K each with taxes and one guy to supervise the supervisors, let’s make him expensive: $100,000 counting benefits and taxes on say an $80K pay.

William Jacobson (Cornell) blogs the tax consequences of the Obama campaign’s Dinner With Barack fundraising raffle. Three winners and their guests will receive:

Roundtrip airfare (valued at $1,200)
One night in a hotel ($200)
Dinner with President Obama ($200)

The rules state that “all federal, state and local taxes associated with the receipt or use of any prize are the sole responsibility of the winner.” The $1,600 is includible in each winner’s income under § 74 — at the 35% rate, that results in $560 of federal income tax.

Imagine you are a retired black person who was so proud to see the first black president elected and decides to give that $3 from her fixed income to get him re-elected, Just imagine her face after winning that dinner with Obama her getting that $560 tax bill.

That image is the Obama administration in a nutshell.

Update: The DaTechGuy Fundraiser is in progress, our goal is $3000 and any help is appreciated. For details click here for the progress check the thermometer to the right and to kick in hit DaTipJar”.

The call was Hosted by Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (ca-22), he was joined by Doc Hastings (WA-4) Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee & Freshman Rep. Cory Gardner (CO-4).

They made a passionate case for their bill and during the Q & A stressing that gas although lower than a few months ago is still double the price it was when the administration came to office. Chairman Hastings noted that President Obama actions on energy: “His actions are 180 from his rhetoric” and that producers constantly inform him: ”Just tell me what the rules are and don’t change them, give me some certainty” and noted states like North Dakota & Texas experienced growth saying “…by having a policy that protects environment but allows extraction it has fundamentally changed the situation.”

Majority Whip McCarthy suggested folks from the EPA put “personal beliefs and philosophical beliefs” before their actual tasks and during hearings when it comes to the actual effects of regulations on Jobs: “One thing we’ve found in the hearings is they don’t evaluate this …and what it actually means.”

All valid points but it was Freshman Cory Gardner of Colorado that made the most significant point when it comes to freeing energy producers when answering a question from Politico concerning North Dakota as an example. Rather than sticking to North Dakota he noted an example from his own state of Colorado.

In Weld County, CO. there are 31 operators producing energy. Of those 31 companies 2 of them paid a combined $209 million dollars in property taxes.

To put this in perspective the total budget of the county is $200 million.

Run those number through your head a second. This is revenue not produced by raising taxes higher but simply by letting companies operate and pay the taxes already on the books.

Picture every state where the Government has blocked this kind of action. Think of what this kind of thing would do for the budget bottom line. And that doesn’t even count the employment taxes, social security taxes, income taxes, excise taxes and even fuel taxes that these businesses and every single employee they hire will be paying to local, state and federal governments simply for the privilege of working hard and making a money.

As Rep Cory Gardner said: “If we are going to unleash American Energy this is the best way to flip the switch”

Maybe I’m old fashioned being the son of parents born in the 20’s but this makes sense to me.

When you live your life online people what to know what exactly is hiding behind that password:

Bassett, a New York City statistician, had just finished answering a few character questions when the interviewer turned to her computer to search for his Facebook page. But she couldn’t see his private profile. She turned back and asked him to hand over his login information.

and if they don’t ask for passwords they want to be your friend:

In Spotsylvania County, Va., the sheriff’s department asks applicants to friend background investigators for jobs at the 911 dispatch center and for law enforcement positions.

“In the past, we’ve talked to friends and neighbors, but a lot of times we found that applicants interact more through social media sites than they do with real friends,” said Capt. Mike Harvey. “Their virtual friends will know more about them than a person living 30 yards away from them.”

Now if you were talking a job in a prison or something that requires a government security clearance, this wouldn’t be so odd, but times being what they are employers are in the catbird seat and it’s going to be hard for a guy who needs a job to say “no” to something like this.

Lori Andrews, law professor at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law specializing in Internet privacy, is concerned about the pressure placed on applicants, even if they voluntarily provide access to social sites.

“Volunteering is coercion if you need a job,” Andrews said.

Before I went full-time with the blog/show as a job I wondered if the blog might have hindered a job search in Massachusetts but I’ve always worn my politics in plain view.

Just remember as I’vesaid many timesbefore, the internet is forever, and what you put online on Facebook or elsewhere is only as private as the person who likes you least among your circles chooses to keep it.

Update 2: Commentator Foible offers some insight worth promoting to the main post:

Think that photo from Burning Man is safe because your name isn’t on it? Maybe that was true when you posted it but facial recognition software or facebook tagging will connect it to you soon enough. Do you use an alias on some blogs? Patterns of word use can be used to match up different online personas.

…

When I want privacy over the internet I use encryption, OpenPGP is the package I’ve installed for my email. No matter what end of the political spectrum you reside on, I strongly recommend using some form of encryption to protect your first amendment rights.

Like this:

The media meme today is the economy is getting better and Obama’s numbers are improving and it doesn’t matter what is actually happening at Whirlpool:

Appliance maker Whirlpool Corp. said Friday it will cut 5,000 jobs, about 10 percent of its workforce in North America and Europe, as it faces soft demand and higher costs for materials.

But…but the numbers look at the numbers

Whirlpool also cut its 2011 earnings outlook drastically and reported third-quarter results that missed expectations, hurt by higher costs and a slowdown in emerging markets.

The company, whose brands include Maytag and KitchenAid, has been squeezed by soft demand since the recession and rising costs for materials such as steel and copper. The company has raised prices to combat higher costs, but demand for big-ticket items like refrigerators and washing machines remains tight.

Not those numbers the stock market’s from yesterday. The new GDP numbers, that’s the story we want to report.

Like this:

With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.

Al Gore is on the list of customers waiting to receive their Fisker Karmas, having put in his order before the DOE signed off on the company’s half-billion dollar loan. Oh, and by the way, it just so happens that several major investors in the company are also major donors to the Democratic Party. And here’s information on John Doerr, an advisor to President Obama who is also a major investor in Fisker Automotive. Can you say, “crony capitalism?”

Hey President Obama if you wanted to employ Finns you should have had the car built here in Fitchburg. We have so many Finns we have a Finnish consulate.

Can someone explain why any Republican is worried about the 2012 election again?

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Oh God, you who gave free will to your creation, bless those who use that precious gift to blog.

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